Masoud Karbasian, the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) announced that the company said NIOC was planning to issue bonds worth IRR 20,000 billion to finance projects aimed at production enhancement and maintenance of oil fields in Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Saudi Aramco has hired four banks as advisers to its first bond sale, possibly by June 2017, ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO) in 2018, in order to raise as much as $10b in bonds in 2017.

Egypt’s Ministry of Finance picked four banks to manage a dollar bond issuance, as the country plans to sell $3b to $5b in international bonds during the current fiscal year ending June 30 2017, with the first issuance planned for October. JPMorgan Chase , Citigroup, BNP Paribas SA and Paris-based Natixis SA will oversee the sale.

Algeria plans to issue local-currency debt as a source of financing to offset the collapse in world oil prices, which halved government's energy revenues last year.

The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq announced that it may sell parts of its electricity sector to raise funds to reduce its budget deficit.

Kuwait's government is studying whether to raise fees for its services, Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh told the local press.

Bahrain's $1.5b bond sale, last week, is a bad sign that Gulf borrowers will have to pay a lot more to issue debt in coming months because of low oil prices and less enthusiastic investors.

A source informed Bloomberg that the Iraqi government has mandated Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to organize meetings to help launch the country’s planned $6b international bond program, announced last month.

Informed sources, on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Saudi Aramco is talking to banks about raising a $5b loan to help out a refinery it built in collaboration with China's Sinopec.

Renaissance Services shareholders have approved plans for the company to buy back mandatory convertible bonds issued in 2012 and issue perpetual bonds,